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January 10, 2018


A Few Brief Sentences On Stan Lee Sexual Harassment Charges

Like most people I read this Daily Mail piece about Stan Lee physically and verbally accosting healthcare workers assigned to the 95-year-old's care. Every single story of this nature needs to be taken absolutely seriously.

In this case, I join a lot of industry observers in believing it might be better to embrace a deliberate attitude as part of that seriousness and keep ourselves from skipping to the next step. The Daily Mail is a toilet with a web site. Unlike reports where an individual reaches out to the press person, there's a factual claim of a legal filing that has been disputed by Lee's camp. Either we find out such a filing was made or we find out this is not true. If that all works out to be credible, there could be issues -- not justifications but issues -- with Lee being a 95-year-old recent widower that might make us pull apart what we learn in a slightly different way than the speed and certainty that might benefit another case.

The danger is that comics frequently ignores stuff unless it's in their twitter feed right this minute, and comics entities frequently wait out stories they don't want to engage -- the Akira Yoshida story being the latest. I hope that at least the industry press will take it on themselves to keep their eye on this one if the initial facts take a few weeks to sort out. I'll be figuring it out, too. There may be a tough decision or two out there for conventions/festivals that are set to host Lee in the meantime.
 
posted 9:55 pm PST | Permalink
 

 
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